


Forlorn Hope

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M, Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 15:05:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1862271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hahahaha *faceplant* someone pointed out to me I'd never moved this beastie over to AO3.  Jetfire/Sixshot, pnp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. FH-3

Jetfire readied the weapon, his thick fingers clumsy even in the open triggerwell. He could see the muzzle wobble on its bipod. He was so bad at this. He wasn’t a fighter. He knew this.  Everyone knew this. Which was why they gave him these rear-echelon jobs, like the quiet little research and fabrication station.  It was supposed to be safe here, the front lines of battle far, far away.

Except that someone was outside, having blown through the Grade Six blast doors as though they were made of fatigued tin, having easily blow the defensive turrets. And who was now battering at the even heavier, lead-lined doors to the radioactive research room.

Jetfire risked a glance to the table on which the rifle’s bipod rested.  Datatracks had slipped from the neat stack he’d put them in—all the findings he’d made, vorns of research.  It seemed at once somehow offensive to have all that time compressed into the files, and at the same time, a satisfying testament: Jetfire had contributed. He had mattered. He wasn’t a warrior, but still. He had mattered, would matter, would maybe, one day, have his research end the war or, better yet, help consolidate the peace or brighten the future.

Even if he died, he hoped that his research would survive. That’s what counted.

Another loud hiss, followed by a thoom so loud that the floor vibrated under Jetfire’s feet. He braced himself, mentally more than physically.

The door buckled inward, metal crumpling. Jetfire could hear the sharp hiss as the rubber gasket seals blew, as if the door itself were in pain.

Jetfire lowered himself awkwardly.  ‘Make yourself a smaller target’ Ironhide had told him, during his abortive ‘training’.  ‘Decepticons will shoot you sure as any of the rest of us.’  Yes, Jetfire knew that.  Another reminder that they held him at arm’s length. Another reason to station him far away from ‘the enemy’—because they didn’t entirely believe he wasn’t one of ‘the enemy’ himself. 

A cracking boom. The room plunged into darkness after a single flash of light threw an elongated silhouette into the room. 

The boom echoed away into a ringing silence.  Red optics glowed, malevolent beacons in the darkness.  Jetfire became aware of his own optics—how they must be limning the rifle in front of him, bright blue targets.  He waited, hesitated, holding back from making the first move, taking the first shot.  He could hear Ironhide’s voice in his cortex, howling at him to take the shot. 

He was not Ironhide.  Perhaps, he was not, really, an Autobot.

The red optics moved, suddenly, swinging in a long arc.  Jetfire flinched back, curling one long white finger around the trigger, as the optics came for him, then, suddenly, abruptly, noisily, downward. 

The mech had fallen, collapsed just on the other side of the workbench.  The rifle seemed to jump from Jetfire’s hands, clattering on the table as he leapt over it, barely able to think what he was doing before he did it.  Did he think the mech was Starscream? He didn’t know. But he’d seen red optics, and…not taken the shot. He’d rationalized that he was waiting for the Decepticon to shoot first, to obey some Rules of Engagement.  Even he wasn’t sure he believed it.

His optics adjusted to the dimness as he squatted by the inert form.  One hand found a vertical stabilizer mounted by the shoulder frame.

The mech groaned. Jetfire could feel a shiver of pain through the panel under his palm. 

“Are you injured?” He winced. Unnecessary question. Stupid question.  He waited for the retort. An Autobot would ask that question, though, wouldn’t he? 

But why couldn’t Jetfire imagine any of the Autobots he knew asking that of a Decepticon?

“Fix me.”  The voice was deep, gravelly, and somehow thready.  A groan of metal, the mech turning gingerly over. 

“I-I’m not a medic,” Jetfire said.  His optics, nonetheless, skittered down the damaged frame. The mech was almost his size, white armor scorched and gouged and charred, pink energon luminescing dully in his lowlight optics.

A click, and the unmistakable black eye of a pistol muzzle staring him down. “Wasn’t a request.”

Jetfire stared at the muzzle, waiting.  My research, he thought, a chill rushing through him. That will survive. He waited.  The muzzle wobbled, suddenly, the servos in the hand firing unsteadily.  His optics went back to the red ones.  They flickered as well, pain and something like a distant alarm warring in them.  What else could he do? What if this had been Starscream? Could he turn away an injured mech?  He didn’t know what an Autobot would do. But he knew what THIS Autobot would do.  “I’ll do my best.” 

“…better,” the voice croaked.  The optics dimmed, the hand falling limp, pistol jouncing from the nerveless hand.

[***]

Sixshot felt his systems online, slowly, painfully. He didn’t begrudge the pain.  It was a sign he was still alive.  His optics powered on, flaring in the light of emergency-generator lighting.  He was alone. And able to move—his split lines repaired, armor undented, if still filthy, fuel topped off. Foolish Autobot. But…compliant.  Sixshot would do him the favor of killing him quickly. His hands closed, seeking weapons, and found none. 

No matter. He didn’t need guns to kill.  Merely opportunity.

A shadow moved in the far end of the room. “You are awake?”  The voice he remembered from before, from that fever-dazed state in which he’d battered his way into the tiny base, determined to find something to slake his rising core temp.  Reapers. He should have known they wouldn’t accept a second refusal with good grace. 

“Back off, Autobot.” His voice was thinner than he liked, sounded far away. Weak. He hated it.  His core temp was still high, but not, at least, redlining.  His secondary and tertiary systems were on and above marginal. Improvement. 

“You asked me to repair you. I had to get…rather near.”  The mech approached again, his white armor smirched and smudged with char and flecks of energon. Sixshot’s energon.  

Sixshot’s optics narrowed into a glare.

The Autobot, a large flyer, holding out a small drum. “Coolant. Your systems require a flush.”  He stilled, waiting for some acknowledgement, permission.

Sixshot ran a quick check.  Yes. His coolant was discharged and sludgy.  He struggled up onto his elbows, nodding warily.  His optics tracked the white fingers as they opened one of his access hatches, the touch coolly competent, hooking the coolant pump.  Sixshot repressed a sigh as the cool fluid began seeping through his lines. 

He felt the blue optics on him, as if waiting for something. Gratitude?  Huh. He’d wait a long time for that.  Not that he had that long to live.

“I tried to inform you that I am not a medic. But I did the best I could.”

Sixshot grunted.  He had no complaints.  He was online, and the coolant was sapping the dangerous heat, building his strength, pushing him toward recovery. And then, kill this mech and then…and then the Reapers.

He felt the optics continue to search over him.  His gaze narrowed. “What?”

The Autobot twitched, as if caught doing something wrong. “I-I was studying your engineering. It is…unusual.”

Yes, and that was all the more reason why the Autobot had to die—in his blind pain, Sixshot had been vulnerable—this mech already had seen too much, probably had a list of his vulnerabilities.   “It is.”

“Oh.” The blue optics flared. “I am sorry. I should introduce myself.”

No. Don’t, Sixshot thought.  Do not try to become a mech with a name to me. Do not think it will save you.

“My name is Jetfire.”

Jetfire.  The name resonated dimly in his cortex.  A no-kill order.  Really. Intriguing.  Not that it mattered.  He could mission-override the directive. 

The coolant system signaled that the flush was complete.  Jetfire busied himself unhooking the line. “Is there anything else I can do for you? To make you more comfortable?”

The question confused Sixshot.  “Comfortable?” he echoed the alien word.

“Are you in pain?” Jetfire’s hands stilled, optics turning to meet Sixshot’s.

Sixshot shrugged. He was always in pain. “Means nothing.”

“It means your systems are not optimally functional.” A strange earnestness burned behind the blue.  A flash of image: the blue optics dulled and dead, spiderwebbed with cracks.  Sixshot blinked and the optics were once again open and wide and blue.

Sixshot sat up, pushing the mech away. “I’m fine.”

Jetfire staggered back a few paces, the drum of now-filthy coolant clutched in one hand. “I am glad to hear that,” he said, unsteadily.  “I did what I could.”   And then the question Sixshot had wanted to avoid. “Can I ask your designation?”

No reason not to answer, really.  Jetfire was going to die, at Sixshot’s hands. Knowing the name of the mech who killed him would hardly do any harm. “Sixshot.” He felt vaguely gratified at the surprise and alarm that flashed over the light face. Yes. Fear. 

Another flash, the black char on the mech’s armor was not merely transfer, but the bubbled scorch of fresh injuries, the concerned tautness of the face reduced to a dead laxness. Soon, Sixshot murmured to the darkness within him.

Sixshot swung his legs over the edge of the worktable Jetfire had laid him on.  His cortex whirled, his tanks roiling to one side.  He clutched the edge of the table, head swinging forward, systems whitelining from too much motion. 

White hands closed on his shoulders, steadying him.   “I’m sorry,” Jetfire said, quickly. “I must have overcalibrated the main gyroscopic input.” 

You’re sorry, Sixshot thought, darkly, suspiciously, watching as one hand rested on his shoulder, benignly, without force, another reaching for what Sixshot recognized as a medical scanner. Sixshot stared at it, trying to stop the room from spinning by fixing his vision on the fingers, white on white. 

“I can make the adjustments…if you’ll let me.”  Pausing, waiting for permission. Again. Sixshot nodded, dully.  Simply, he rationalized, because he could not function this way. And he liked the irony of killing the mech who just repaired him. Give me the capability to destroy you, Autobot.

 Jetfire reached for the access panel again, leaning over.  Sixshot held himself rigid, refusing to lean onto the broad shoulder for balance as the white helm lowered to his chassis. A soft laugh. “I believe you speak even less than I do.”

“Nothing to say and no one to say it to,” Sixshot countered, still queasy from the gyro error.  Simply to be contrary.

The head tilted up. “I would imagine you have plenty to say.” The blue optics were pools of sincerity. If Sixshot hadn’t already had his gyros spinning, such naivete would have done it.  Jetfire returned to his work.  Sixshot felt the gyroscopic rheo adjust downward.  His head cleared almost instantly. 

“Not really.”

Jetfire pulled his hands away, slowly, solicitously, holding his palms out in case Sixshot needed to grasp them for balance.  “I envy you, then,” he said, his voice strangely soft.

“Don’t.”  

A long silence.  Jetfire turned to put away the scanner, showing the broad expanse of his back, his wingspan, to Sixshot.  Sixshot had flashes of images—tearing off those wings. He could feel the popping rivets beneath his hands, smell the ionizing energon. Turning his back was an insult, weighing Sixshot as less than a threat.  Sixshot should be incensed. He should attack.  What are you waiting for? Kill the Autobot.

Jetfire turned back to him, a question trembling on his lips. “Do…do you not trust them, or do they not trust you?”  His hands held something—not a weapon. That was all Sixshot registered—that was all that mattered, in his world.

The question made no sense, and every sense in the world.  “Both,” Sixshot heard himself answering, roughly.  “But loyalty doesn’t demand trust.”

“No,” Jetfire replied. “It does not.”  His voice was heavy with a familiar resonance—the hollowness of a regret that could not allow itself to be said aloud.  He straightened, the wings spreading wide. “I…I know you are going to kill me, Sixshot.  I only ask that…,” his voice cracked. Distress lightning-struck across his face at his own break. “I—I only ask that you take these.  Do not let them be lost.” He thrust out what turned out to be a stack of datatracks. “Please.”

Sixshot took the tracks, numbly.  No. This was not how it was supposed to go.  Jetfire should be begging for his life. Screaming in agony.  He could feel the mech’s fear, but it was not the fear of the dying.

It was the despair of the dreadfully alone.

“Not going to kill you,” he muttered, disgusted.  Not because of the no-kill order. That…didn’t bind him anyway.  He laid the datatracks down. 

It was worth it—almost—to see the look of confusion on the Autobot’s face.  “I…uh…thank you.”

“Don’t,” Sixshot said, sourly.  Another image—the blue cockpit ruptured, light glinting whitesilver from shards of glass. He could practically hear the glass’s musical sobbing as it shattered, fell. His optics blinked.  The voices in his cortex whispered inexorably, pushing him to action. He resisted. 

“How do you cope with it?  Being alone?” Jetfire asked it as if they had this thing in common.  Resentment swelled in Sixshot’s cortex—he and Jetfire were nothing alike. Nothing.

He knew the answer—he buried himself in missions, threw himself into combat. Seeking pain, sensation.  Not for his social isolation, but for a larger alienation—that there was no one like him. No one capable of understanding who or what he was.  So instead, he punished the world, punished himself, filling his days with torment, an unsated maw of isolation. “I don’t.”   

Jetfire’s rigid wings seemed to sag.  “I am…sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. Not your problem.” Not Sixshot’s problem. No. It wasn’t.  Nothing compared to the flashes of atrocities waiting to be born that flashed across his cortex, the voices like a mob of dark passengers, like the spirits of the mechs he’d killed begging for more company, ghosts feeding on pain. 

“Not the same way, no,” Jetfire said.  “I did not mean to offend you by a comparison.”  Not the same. At all.  Sixshot would never repair another mech.  Much less one he knew would kill him. Jetfire made no sense. No sense.

Sixshot tilted his head, before he realized that Jetfire had misread his statement.  Not surprising: Sixshot was willing to grant that he was inept at conversation.  A stupid skill. Worlds were not destroyed through words.  “Not offended.” He felt a strange urge rise up in him, pushing aside the roiling tide of violence.  He tried to tell himself it served some purpose. Some military purpose. 

What other use was there?

But when he came to put it to words, he grated at the clumsiness.  Hand him a weapon and he could make devastation an art.  Ask a question and…he was lost.  Curiosity was lethal, was weakness.  But. Did Jetfire, after all, have the answer to that as well? Could he quiet the voices, fill Sixshot with something other than singleminded murder?

“You…feel?”


	2. Relapse

Sixshot had relapsed. Whatever cybertoxin that had afflicted him, Jetfire had failed at finding it, failed at purging it.  The white shuttle felt the failure painfully, watching every spasm and writhe as though it should have happened to him, instead.  It seemed unfair that Sixshot be punished for Jetfire’s failing.

Sixshot’s core temperature had spiked alarmingly, and Jetfire had been, for once, pleased for his own strength, that allowed him to lever the large mech—who was heavier than he seemed—off the workbench that had become an ersatz repair table, and into an equally impromptu cooling tub. 

Sixshot had only groaned, then, his white hands clutching on air, gasping as the icy saline bit into his systems, dissipating his dangerous heat.

Jetfire had sat a worried vigil by the tank, monitoring the other mech’s vitals.  The faction marking did not matter to him, only that another mech was injured.

And, if he were completely honest, the cybertoxin intrigued him. It was something he’d never seen before. Unique etiology.  Unknown course.  He had done everything he could, trying to be respectful of boundaries, not to transgress too far into Sixshot’s privacy. 

And he found himself, sadly, strangely, talking to the half-delirious mech.  At first simply telling him what he was doing, so that Sixshot would not perceive his ministrations as an attack.  But then, as the cycles passed, he began talking more and more, words spilling out of him. It felt…safe somehow.  Partly because he felt that here was someone who would not hate him for his doubts, would not find his prattling about his discoveries tedious.  Mostly, he thought, wryly, because Sixshot likely wouldn’t remember any of it.

So he told the feverish form, as he monitored the core temperature, or changed the cooling bath once again, his entire life.  Why he pursued science, his more recent doubts about its purity and integrity. His hatred of war, his belief in peace, his friendship with Starscream, his admiration for Optimus, and how unrequited and hopeless he felt both his desires were. All the little inconsequentialities he had been gathering for years he poured over the Phase Sixer.  And he felt foolish enough, and he knew that the odds were still not settled, that Sixshot was just as likely to kill him at any moment as before.  But it felt like a relief, like a dam bursting, to get those words out of him first. 

“And so,” he said, “that’s how I ended up here, on a research station. A-a compromise of ethics, I suppose.”  He leaned over to swipe an ethyl alcohol damp rag over Sixshot’s face, cooling it, cleaning away some of the black smudges. 

Unconscious, Sixshot was…not unattractive, Jetfire thought, and then suddenly found himself hot with embarrassment. He should not be having these thoughts. At all. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, quickly, apologizing to the air for his treacherous thoughts.

The optics glowed, dimly. “Don’t compromise,” Sixshot murmured.  One hand flexed experimentally in the water. 

Jetfire stiffened, his wings going rigid. “I-I am sorry,” he stammered. 

“Said that already.” The head turned toward him, optics focusing like targeting lasers.  No, they probably _were_ targeting lasers. “What for?”

“Talking so much about myself.”  Jetfire ducked his head.  He busied himself folding and refolding his damp rag. 

Sixshot shifted, rolling his shoulders in their joints, armor rippling.  Liquid slopped over the tank’s rim.  He huffed, frustrated. “Still sick.” 

“I know,” Jetfire said. “I’ve done my best to stabilize you, but to counteract the toxin I’d need access to your cortical systems and a sample of your energon. And I didn’t, well….” 

Sixshot snorted. “Bad idea.  Deadman bomb in my cortex.” 

“Oh.” Jetfire felt abashed. He could have, probably should have, thought of that contingency.  Another reason he was not a warrior.  He simply could not, try as he might, make himself think that way.

He felt Sixshot’s optics on him, weighing him, measuring something he could not figure.  “All right,” he said.  “You can have your sample and…access.”

It struck Jetfire suddenly that this was the first thing he’d heard Sixshot say that didn’t have some sort of negation in it.  He nodded, and hurried to gather the scanner and the hypodermic, feeling a strange warmth at Sixshot’s display of trust.  He found himself chattering again, this time from nervousness. “Your core temperature has stabilized, finally,” he reported, despite the fact that Sixshot probably already knew that. “And this might be the last of it clearing your system, but I’d rather know than guess.” 

A non-committal grunt, and some splashing and slopping noises.  When he turned, he saw Sixshot hauling himself upright.  Water glistened over his limbs, falling like crystals.  The other mech saw him, stopped. “Problem?”

“No,” Jetfire said.  He clamped his optics shut.  He had not been staring. He had not. 

…except he had been.  The salinated water ran in intoxicatingly complex rivulets over the white and purple and green armor, drawing lines like feather caresses over the broad metal.  “I-I was just uncertain what that sound was.”

Another grunt, and Sixshot began moving again, raising one leg over the edge, placing it on the ground, then the other.  Fighting against his weakness, trying to push past it, through it.  Trying to regain control, at least of himself.

Jetfire wished he had that much self-control. He could barely stop the treacherous thoughts from forming, from hijacking his rebellious optics, his errant thoughts.  Jetfire tore his optics away, self-conscious, concentrating on gathering his tools.  When he finally allowed himself to turn back around, Sixshot had propped himself against the workbench, watching him.  Closed off, inscrutable, saline pooling around his footplates.  The open laxness of his unconscious body had been replaced by a subtle tension—servos primed to fire.  What was it like to be always on edge? 

He came closer. “The sample first, perhaps?”

Sixshot nodded, holding out one of his arms.  “Autorepair’s better in this one,” he said—an explanation that asked more questions than it settled.  Jetfire nodded, and took the syringe, loading it with a sample capsule as Sixshot sent the code that sprang his armor locks, revealing the bare cables of his systems underneath.  Jetfire found the blue-mesh of the energon line, placing the plasmaneedle’s edge against it.  He waited for a flinch, for any sign of pain from the mech as the plasmaneedle bit into the mesh, punctured the hose, and began drawing the pink-purple fluid out. Sixshot’s arm was rigidly still, his optics studying…Jetfire. Jetfire ducked his head back to studying the exposed systems. Even with the prolonged saline soak, the lines were gummed and smeared, nicked and dented.

“You could use a refit.” The words escaped before he could even think them through. 

A strange grating sound. It took Jetfire a full klik to realize that that was Sixshot’s laugh.  “Never time for it,” he said. 

The capsule pinged its fullness. Jetfire drew out the needle, the prepared daub of hose sealant on his other finger stroking gently over the cut.  “You have time now.” 

A long moment, and Jetfire could feel the building tension in Sixshot’s servos, actuators building charge. He could feel the rising tension, but, even so, he was taken off-guard when Sixshot moved, one white hand slamming under his chin, digits closing around his throat. 

The red optics were a handspan—or less—away from his own, wide and blaring.  “What’s your game, Jetfire?” the voice rasped near his. 

“No game,” Jetfire said. He felt, strangely, no fear. Only a rush of startlement. His processor traced the vulnerable lines and pressure points—unerringly found by the white fingers.   Any control he had, over the situation, over himself, evaporated. Even so, he felt a strange, quiet faith that Sixshot wouldn't kill him, if for no other reason than if that were his intent, Jetfire would already be dead.  

“Aiding the enemy,” Sixshot said, slapping Jetfire with the words, staring into Jetfire’s wide blue optics.  Yes, that’s what he was doing. Exactly. “Or,” Sixshot continued, “You’re planning on killing me.”  He watched Jetfire’s face, keenly.  The fingers released from around his throat, abruptly.  Jetfire’s cables still throbbed from the compression. “Not planning on killing me. Would have done it before.”  He twitched his head to one side, as if shooing off the unpleasant memory of having been so vulnerable.

Jetfire’s hand curled over the plasmaneedle. A weapon, if only he’d thought to use it.  “A mech is a mech,” he said, simply.

 “Autobot ideals.”  Sixshot scoffed. “Seems you’re the only one who actually tries to live by them.”

It was tempting to agree. Tempting to hold himself above his fellow mechs.  But Jetfire couldn’t do it. “Not true.”  He left it at that. He wondered how Sixshot’s processor worked. The whole system seemed entirely foreign to him. A mystery.  “But it is an offer.” 

Part of him trembled with excitement at the words, imagining stripping down the armor, scrubbing down the gummy mesh, revealing stark clean hoses and metal.  Knowing Sixshot’s systems, slowly, carefully, methodically. It was science and mystery and desire combined. So different from Starscream’s fire; so different from Optimus’s calming presence.  Sixshot was wild, dangerous, and yet…somehow open.  Somehow wanting something outside himself, but helpless to name it, much less seize it.

And he could feel that yearning charging the air between them, as Sixshot’s hand came up to rub where Jetfire had smeared the liquid hose patch.  “First fix the cybertoxin,” Sixshot said.

Which was, Jetfire realized, a stumbling, halting ‘yes.’

 


	3. Transgression

Jetfire laid out the brushes, scrapers, wrenches, solvents, and all the cleansing tools he could need, along with patch lengths of standard types of cables and mesh.  He could feel Sixshot’s optics on him.  And he was beginning to find the weight of that gaze to be comforting.  He was wondering how he’d ever felt it to be threatening, that cool red gaze. 

“I think this is everything I’ll need.” He’d wanted to lay it all out before Sixshot, so the other mech could see,  no trickery. No deceit.  If Jetfire were even capable of deceit. 

“Countertoxin.”

It was strange how Jetfire was even becoming used to Sixshot’s truncated way of asking questions. “Are you having any side effects?”  He turned his blue optics to face Sixshot. 

Silence.  Which was a ‘no’. 

“I will only clean a small part right now. You will be fully online and operational.  The countertoxin will continue to work and I can monitor you more closely.”  He felt, acutely, his clumsiness.  He was not Ratchet; he lacked a medic’s ability to explain the situation.  And he could still feel himself using words to try to fill up Sixshot’s silence.

Sixshot grunted, approaching. “What.” 

Jetfire felt a smile curl across his face. It felt…alien.  How long had it been since he’d smiled? That long that it felt unfamiliar?  Disconcerted, he said, “Something small.  You said one arm did not have good autorepair?”

Sixshot moved to the other side of the workbench, laying his arm across it. He met Jetfire’s gaze steadily, popping his armor locks. 

Jetfire observed, reaching to pick up a brush.  “I have your permission to touch you?” He wanted to be certain.  And…he wanted to make Sixshot say ‘yes’.  The fancy had seized him, a wild delight, a challenge.  Starscream, he thought, would approve  of such a whim.

“Be dead if I didn’t.”

Jetfire made a snort, a feeble tendril of a laugh.  An actual laugh. It felt…better than he remembered. “Can you say ‘yes’?”

A hesitation. “If I wanted.”

The snort grew a little more certain, finding its legs.  He couldn’t tell if Sixshot had said it to be witty.  He didn’t credit the Phase Sixer with much of a sense of humor.  But he felt a slight lessening of the tension in the servos laid out beneath him on the work surface. He wasn’t offended, at least.

Then again, he thought more soberly, he couldn’t imagine a mech who had lived a life as Sixshot had would have much to find funny. He could feel the smile fade from his mouth. 

He bent over the exposed arm, concentrating on the gunked up cables in front of him, trying not to think of what they had done, how many they had worked to kill.  He worked in silence for a time, scrubbing the grease and the cables, crusted energon—most likely not all Sixshot’s—spilled from ancient battles, swabbing a fine solvent on the corroded contact plates, keeping his optics and cortex firmly on the work at hand.

It was strangely sensuous, he thought, but perhaps only because he wasn’t a proper medic. Someone with actual medic training would probably have gotten accustomed to viewing his patients as simple parts, and not…what Jetfire was thinking. 

And it was gratifying work, though tedious, to watch the dirt of…ages finally scrub away, hoses and cables and connectors gleaming.  He took a moment to study: Sixshot had said the self-repair was hampered on this arm.  The nanite reservoir looked intact, but…perhaps it had been damaged somehow? 

He switched tools to a small cutter without bothering to ask permission, and sliced into the reservoir to get a sample.  The stuff was dead and sluggish, heavy like mud instead of liquid.  “You were exposed to gamma radiation?” he said, looking up. 

Sixshot shrugged. “Among other things.” 

Jetfire held up his clot-covered probe.  “The nanites are useless.  Batching new ones will take a decacycle.”  An implied question.  He rotated the chamber to drain—either way, it was doing Sixshot no good.

Sixshot considered.  “No way faster.”  Jetfire knew what he was thinking—that batching would require programming them with his entire system scan.  A little too personal.

“I…I could give you some of my own to transition but…it would be painful.” 

A shrug.  “Faster, though.” 

Jetfire hesitated.  Then, “All right.”  He suppressed a strange, quiet, entirely unscientific thrill that part of his systems would become Sixshot’s.  He hid the embarrassing thought in motion, as he bustled to get the transfusion equipment, only sitting back down across from the six-changer when he felt somewhat in control.  He was pleased that his hands didn’t shake as he opened his own armor lock and probed the catheter into his own reservoir. 

Jetfire studied Sixshot’s face keenly as the nanites began to transfuse.  There was a slight tightening around the optic lenses, but nothing more.  “It hurts?” It had to, Jetfire knew. It had to be blazing white hot fire through Sixshot’s arm as the nanites tried to repair Sixshot’s systems into Jetfire’s own, only to be stopped, logjammed by error/restart messages until they took the new coding.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Sixshot said, and then stopped, abruptly, as if surprised at the amount of words he’d said.

“That wasn’t what I’d asked,” Jetfire pushed.

Sixshot’s optics flicked. “It wasn’t,” he agreed. And then…nothing. Infuriating, characteristic stonewall.

Jetfire pushed further. “You feel pain…you feel pleasure?” Regret flared instantly at the piercing gaze.  He twisted his head away, embarrassed.

“No.” Sixshot’s voice was flat. The hand on the exposed arm twitched, clenching on air.

Jetire blinked, still embarrassed, but his curiosity piqued. “No?”

Another of those enigmatic shrugs. 

Jetfire set his cutter on its weakest setting, and slid it down a line. “That?” It should feel like a gentle feathering caress.

The optics flickered, nothing more.

Jetfire put the tool down. “I can run an advanced diagnostic.”  There was simply no other reason why Sixshot couldn’t feel pleasure. It seemed somehow…wrong. Awful. The worst thing a Decepticon could do—make one of their own anhedonic. Some sort of programming block or coding error. 

Sixshot snatched his hand away, armorlocks snapping closed, as he swung his other arm over the table, throwing Jetfire face down upon the work surface.  Tools scattered, rolling and clattering while Jetfire tried to calm down from the sudden blast of panic. He turned his cheek to the table, optics searching up Sixshot’s chassis, while the Phase Sixer’s hands pinned him, hard.  He felt a weight over his shoulders, a shadow falling over his vision.

“It was an offer,” he managed.

The grips tightened on him, the weight on his wings almost trembling. “You won’t get at me that easily, Autobot,” Sixshot snarled. 

“I didn’t mean—I wouldn’t.  Just to fix you.  Just to help.” Jetfire craned his neck, trying to see Sixshot’s face.  “Please.” 

“Don’t need ‘help’.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”Jetfire went slack, loose. He couldn’t fight Sixshot. The only thing he could do is what he’d always done: not fight.

“Sorry because I’m going to kill you.”

Jetfire’s audio scraped on the worktable. “No. Sorry that I upset you.”  His voice was raw with every emotion except fear.

He heard a rumbling growl, and then, abruptly, the weight on his back was gone. He lay still for a moment, letting the heat from Sixshot’s contact seep off into the air. He moved, slowly, as unthreatening as possible, pushing carefully off the bench.  Sixshot glared at him from across the table.  Studying him; unable to figure him out.  The only reason, Jetfire realized, he was still alive.

Jetfire stooped to pick up the tools, his wings flicking, feeling Sixshot’s optics gaze heavy on him.  He came around the bench to pick up the cutter, stooping low. 

He straightened, the tension rising, his wings pinning rigid against his back. “I did not mean to transgress. Honestly.” 

“Transgress.” 

Jetfire fiddled with the cutter in his fingers. “I…got too close.”  Foolishness.  He was not much of an Autobot but he could hardly seek solace from the enemy.  Loneliness was eroding him. 

“Close,” Sixshot echoed.  His hand lashed out, snatching the tool from Jetfire’s fingers.  He pulled the mech closer by one white wrist.  Jetfire’s canopy clinked against the chassis. He had never realized how close in height they were.  It was the closest anyone had come, the optics nearly level with his own.  He felt his ventilation system hitch. 

He flinched, feeling a hard hand on his wing.  The grip softened, slid down the aileron, awkwardly, curiously, Sixshot’s optics boring into Jetfire’s.

“What do you want?” Jetfire asked, cautious.  The hand, he knew, could grip with force enough to crush his wing. 

“No more talking,” Sixshot said, his other hand slicking over Jetfire’s rib frame.  An answer to his question? An order?  Did it matter?

Jetfire felt a tremble but he couldn’t decide if it was from his own frame or Sixshot’s.  He raised a hand, slowly, still a bit wary lest his gesture be read as a threat, and brushed Sixshot’s shoulder.

The hand tightened on his waist, and Jetfire could feel the tension in the Phase Sixer’s frame, as he fought with…some darkness. Something that read every gesture as an attack, that read every contact as an attempt to injure. Sixshot was, in his way, as frozen to pleasure as Jetfire was, his own systems throwing up blocks between himself and anything like comfort.  But Jetfire could also feel the supreme effort to fight against it.

Jetfire realized that…he would have to take lead. He was not used to being the more experienced—it did not come easily to him.  He ran a shy thumb over Sixshot’s facemask, encouraged as the other mech turned, ever-so-slightly into the gesture. He felt a question bubble up in his vocalizer, but remembered Sixshot’s last words. Right. No more talking. They were neither of them adroit with words, and they were useless now, anyway. 

And he would have to trust Sixshot to read his intentions for what they were, which was, he thought, probably as much of a stress to trust as Sixshot’s own battle. 

Wordlessly, then, he opened his interface hatch, his optics dropping, shyly, and then back up, hopefully.  Sixshot blinked, then tapped a panel on his side.  The armor was battered, dented, and Jetfire had to pry it open, a bit surprised by the Phase Sixer’s passivity. 

He asked permission, with his gaze, one finger gently circling the access port’s rim.  Sixshot stretched a hand toward Jetfire’s equipment, his own thumb clumsily mimicking Jetfire’s gesture.  Jetfire sagged against him, quivering, leaning to rest his helm against Sixshot’s, their faces close.  I don’t want this to hurt, he thought, wished, as hard as he was able.  What he was afraid, even to think to himself, was that he didn’t want this to be a disappointment. He could feel his own longing swelling up in him, echoes of long untouched desires resonating back to life.  His electromagnetic field rippled, mapping the contours of Sixshot’s larger frame. 

Even so long unpracticed, Jetfire’s hand remembered the gesture, uncoupled his interface module, finding the access port.  With one sigh of razor-sharp anticipation, he drove his module into the port coupling, feeling it seat, feeling his datastream pulse with the force of long restrained desire.  He fumbled with Sixshot’s module, the cables tangling between his fingers, body twitching with each pulse of his datastream, until he finally, shakily, managed to seat the module. 

Sixshot’s optics flickered, a quivering shudder traveling up his frame.  The lethal white hands clutched at Jetfire, fingerpads sending little stars of almost-pain across his sensornet. The datastreams collided in a explosion of light and color and sensation, fighting for rhythm. Jetfire’s knee servos gave—he clung at the green chassis. Sixshot’s arms tightened, lowering them both to a tangled mass on the floor.  Control was beyond both of them at this point, both helpless before their too-long-restrained desires.

Sixshot’s datastream was some wild, untamed thing, beyond even his ability to control, that battered at, tore at Jetfire’s sensornet, raw and yet impossibly aroused.  This was not the acid sharp desire of Starscream, but something heavy and brutal, unsubtle, blunt, an impossible to stand against.  Jetfire’s datastream whirled around it, trying to catch or counterpoint the tempo, building toward release. 

Sixshot’s hands roamed ferociously over Jetfire’s wings, his chassis sliding slickly over Jetfire’s cockpit.  Jetfire’s own hands explored, with more urgency than he thought he could have, squirming, writhing over the Decepticon. 

A sound started from somewhere deep in Sixshot’s frame, like a buzz, a vibration almost too low to hear at first, vibrating through their frames, rising, growing louder, larger in amplitude until it raised to a deafening roar.  Sixshot bucked upward, his datastream snapping into synch with Jetfire’s, the overload slamming across both of their systems, throwing charge across their nets that swept Jetfire away, away from himself, his body, his ever, ever thinking cortex, until he was nothing but sensation wrapped in fragile tendrils of emotion. 

And the only conscious thought he could make was that he never wanted this to end, never wanted to return to that body, that snarled mass of problems and paradoxes and worries and anxieties. He wanted to stay here…where he was free. 


	4. First

Jetfire had been stunned, then honored, then worried, when he’d put the pieces together: he had been Sixshot’s first.  As heady and flattering as the thought was, that he had been the one chosen, that he had been, in a sense ‘worth it’, it was more than a little distressing to think of a mech gone so long without even the simplest and most obvious of pleasures, one that even he had enjoyed. If…rarely.

Sixshot hadn’t told him—not that he was much for speaking anyway.  But Jetfire had figured it from the ardent way the mech approached him later that night.  Sixshot had come to his berth, stalking in uncanny silence, optics tilted, studying Jetfire until the Autobot had asked, quietly, “Is there something you need?”

That strange bitter snort that was Sixshot’s laugh, and the white hands had descended on Jetfire, pushing him back against the berth, pinning him with casual ease.  “Could say that,” Sixshot murmured.  He squeezed Jetfire’s wrists under one hand, over Jetfire’s head, while his other began roaming over the white frame, the pressure changing from needy almost painful intensity, to almost imperceptible brushes.

Jetfire found himself trembling, the caresses pulling current from his circuits, a trail of glittering dust across his sensornet.  He felt no fear, not this time, that Sixshot would kill him, despite the helpless vulnerability of his position. Sixshot’s optics alternated from Jetfire’s face to tracking his hand’s progress over the white armor, the blue glass of his canopy, tracing the seams of the larger panels.  His EM field rippled against Sixshot, his ventilation cycle staggering, unsteady.  The impassive face studied Jetfire’s squirming response, feeling the change in his EM field. “Possible.” 

Another of his flat questions, as if it somehow was weakness to admit to curiosity.  Jetfire twisted his wrists, gently, wanting to touch as well. It seemed selfish to lie still and receive.  But perhaps Sixshot thought that was too much like a threat, too much like ceding control.  Was it possible?

“To overload from touch? Yes.”  Jetfire’s sensornet was glowingly alive, cascades of sensation whirling across it. A different kind of overload, more…selfish, only one mech enjoying.  The kind of overload Jetfire had found, too often, himself doing, quietly, furtively, alone; when his desires would no longer be ignored. 

Sixshot nodded. “Hnh.”  He pushed one knee between Jetfire’s thighs, glossing the thumb up Jetfire’s thigh armor to brush more gently than Jetfire would have credited, the little glimpse of Jetfire’s exposed cabling.  Jetfire whimpered, pulling at the restraining hand. 

The hand shifted to the span of his wings, stroking across the span, tracing along the aileron lines, gently tweaking the flaps themselves. Jetfire twisted, not knowing if he wanted to lean into the touch or away from it. No, it was not that difficult a question—he wanted to lean into it, more and more, but he felt suddenly shy.  He was not, never had been, wanton or open in his desires. “You’re very…good at that,” he said, lamely, wanting to do something, however feeble, to return the sentiment.

Sixshot shrugged off the compliment. “Jet mode also.”   Oh. Right. Should have remembered that.  And the image it brought to mind, that perhaps Sixshot had also resorted to the same measures but…he would have known, then, wouldn’t he?  That it was possible? 

The thought staggered him, how lonely, how…out of touch (literally) Sixshot’s life seemed.

The bulk of Sixshot’s green chassis floated above Jetfire’s face, as one hand kept his pinned, the other exploring, ruthlessly delicate, palm glossing flat over the armor, fingertips curling into seams and panel edges.  Sixshot’s expression went distant, as though mapping Jetfire’s body. 

Jetfire found himself twisting, his feet scrabbling helplessly, tractionlessly, on the berth. His net tingled, sensation eddying and swirling like falling gemstones, charge building across his systems.  “Please,” he heard himself gasp. He didn’t know what he was asking for, just…please.

Sixshot released his hands as his only answer. “No touching,” he muttered, just as Jetfire reached his hands to touch the stabilizers behind his shoulders.  Jetfire floated his hands reluctantly to the berth, gasping as Sixshot slid both hands over his chassis, down both sides of his rib struts, and up, and then over to his arms. 

“I want…,”  Jetfire murmured, before Sixshot cut him off with a look.

“Later.”  A promise, as well as a denial. Later…when?  Jetfire’s hands wanted to clutch at Sixshot, despite his command.   They did not have forever. He did not know how long they did have, and—he forced the thought from his mind, chased out by another tsunami of sensation as Sixshot leaned further, curling his arms around the break in the wings and rolling down, pulling Jetfire on top of him, his hands now free to caress the entirety of Jetfire’s backspan. Jetfire arched up, throwing his head back, his chassis pressing into Sixshot’s, hands obediently dropping to the berth, curling against the metal.

And Sixshot’s optics were fixed upon him, studying him, his responses, his reactions, and Jetfire found that gaze as arousing as the fingers that ghosted over his frame, the vibration against his body.  He had never been looked at with such naked, raw lust before.  He had never had his desires studied, summoned forth. He had never been, in a sense, desired. Not like this.  And it was humbling and intoxicating at the same time, the two emotions conflicting, fighting like dragons of flame around his cortex, spinning him upward and out of control, his electrical systems sparking, thin threads of current shooting to Sixshot’s fingers  when he broke contact, spattering around the touches, as his systems pushed him, forced him inexorably into overload.  His disobedient hands clutched at Sixshot’s shoulders, white gripping green, as if anchoring himself, as if making Sixshot somehow…real. 

He sagged back, limp, falling against Sixshot’s armor, excess overload charge sparkling blue over his body.  Sixshot stroked it, gently, over his wingspan, with his hands.  A murderer’s hands, a lover’s hands; hands capable of singleminded violence, but also, Jetfire knew, knew intimately, capable of a needy sort of tenderness.

Reluctantly, Jetfire put his palms on the berth, trying to push off.  The red optics narrowed, the hands slowing their touches. “Probably crushing you,” Jetfire said, lamely. 

“No.” As if to prove it, Sixshot lifted his chassis off the berth, Jetfire’s weight on him.

“Oh,” Jetfire said, torn between moving and subsiding back onto the broad green panels, that for once, weren’t too fragile for him, weren’t too light.  “Forgive me: this is all…a bit new to me.”

And Sixshot laughed his rusty laugh, and said, merely, “New.”


	5. Rescue

They fell into a routine that Jetfire would have described as heaven had he put any stock in such a concept. While Jetfire worked on his research projects, Sixshot spent cycles per day repairing the damage he had done to the base, from the nearest blast doors outward, as though trying to wrap this idyll they both knew could not last in safety and illusion for as long as possible. It would end—they both knew it had to end—but both seemed to push the idea, and the reality, further ahead, willfully. 

And the other cycles they spent per day were, even then, precious, rare gems.  Jetfire told his history, again, to the reticent Decepticon, laughing bitterly at his own weaknesses, as if to disarm laughs from Sixshot—mocking laughs that never came. And Jetfire’s laughter became less bitter, more genuine, and Jetfire felt unjudged and somehow…freer and happier than he had ever felt. And Sixshot, for his part, said quiet, enigmatic things, little blurts of stories that hinted at something much worse than Jetfire could imagine anyone enduring.

A handful of times, he’d mentioned his visions, the flashes of brutality, the urge of violence made manifest on his cortex, folding the future into the present, taunting Sixshot with madness. 

Once, he’d mentioned that he’d thought he was going mad, that the visions were devouring him and would one day take over his autonomy altogether. Jetfire had ached with his own helplessness, finding himself wordless before the vulnerability of trust as much as the secret itself.

And those other cycles, more than any other kind, were spent in silence, without words, their bodies doing all the communicating that needed to be done, tangled tenderly in each others’ arms, both shy and awkward, exploring or just seeking some mute comfort in the hum of another system, the touch of another frame.  And sometimes it was ungentle, Sixshot’s desires insistent, pulling Jetfire from his research, driving him against a wall, his hands insistent, optics demanding, his touches verging on the edge of pain, driving Jetfire from his sheltered safety into heights of ecstasy he had never known.  It grounded Jetfire, he knew, as nothing else had done.  And he felt the other mech draw some comfort, some solace, from his own solitude, by the contact.

Until.

Until it all shattered, like splintered glass.

The self-appointed rescue team. 

They battered their way in the middle of recharge cycle, the near blast doors buckling from sudden force.

Sixshot bolted upright from where he had draped on the berth, Jetfire pulled against him.  He swore, shoving Jetfire behind him, hand slamming on the table where Jetfire’s gun, now long since discarded, had languished. Only Sixshot would note where it was, remember it in the sudden rush of an assault. 

“Jetfire!” The voice was muffled from the layers of steel and plascrete. “Respond!”

“I’m fine,” Jetfire said, staggered, slow, by the sudden slam of reality back upon him.  The Autobots here. And there would be no easy answer this time.  Sixshot would be killed, or he would kill Jetfire’s supposed rescuers.

“Let us in! We need to clear the base.”

His optics flew to Sixshot, who had taken a position where he could get a clean high shot on anyone coming through the door, the gun’s barrel balanced on one forearm with an absolute, perfect steadiness.

“I, uh. I’m fine. It’s clear.”  Trying, he knew, to merely delay the inevitable.  He thought, wildly, of asking Sixshot not to shoot. To surrender.  To give in peacefully.

But then he realized that that would be asking Sixshot to be other than he was. Other than who Jetfire wanted him to be.  And he was terrified that if he said the words…Sixshot might obey.  Jetfire did not deserve this kind of power.  He was unworthy. He did not have the right to ask, even so.

“Open up.”  Jetfire could hear the mistrust in the voice.  They were worried, thinking he was held at gunpoint, perhaps, and forced to speak.  If only they knew that they were the ones at gunpoint. 

I can’t, he thought, weakly, something like a sob building in his chest.  I can’t.  And that’s the problem. Because the one time I did open up….

And he hated himself that he hadn’t thought of this sooner, hadn’t come up with a strategy, a solution.  A terrible soldier, without even the rudiments of strategy, but a terrible scientist as well, the most important variable escaping him.

“Sixshot,” he breathed rising to his knees on the abandoned berth.  “I’m sorry.” 

The Phase Sixer’s head twitched at the words.  Jetfire jumped to his feet but it was too late—Sixshot stormed the door, slapping the side panel open.  He’d taken Jetfire’s apology as an admission of complicity, that the whole thing had been a delay, a set up, keeping Sixshot tamed and captive until an attack could be mounted.  Jetfire hadn’t thought—though he should have—that the attack would have sent a beacon of distress through the communication channels.

So…wrong. So awfully dreadfully wrong. Jetfire knew why they spent so much time without speaking. Silence told fewer lies.

“Thank Primus you’re all ri—“  The rest of the word was blasted from his head as Sixshot opened fire, the helm evaporating into an energon-pink mist.  The acrid pall of spark-burnt energon and coolant filled the room.

The other rescuers fell back behind the door as it closed, the fallen mech’s corpse collapsing outside, flames licking fitfully at the power severed power cables.  Jetfire raced to the door, but found himself hauled back, out of the way, by Sixshot. “They’ll kill you,” Sixshot hissed.  At that moment…Jetfire found it hard to care. 

The rustling outside subsided into a taut silence as they waited, setting some trap.  Jetfire felt Sixshot’s arm slide over his shoulder, and he relaxed into the gesture, the familiar contact.  Nothing would happen if they were together, he thought, even as another part rejected that notion as terrible, naïve foolishness.

Foolishness compounded:  Sixshot’s arm curled forward the forearm snaking around his throat, until Jetfire found himself a hostage.  Sixshot kicked the door open again. “HOSTAGE,” he bellowed just before the doors opened. 

They held their fire.  Like good Autobots, Jetfire thought, they held their fire, not willing to damage, even a poor excuse for an Autobot like Jetfire. 

Sixshot pushed him ahead, the white arm firm around his throat, leading him through the squad of rescuers, who froze, barely daring to move.  The threat was unmistakeable, Sixshot’s gun swinging in a calm, steady arc over them in case any of them dared to move.

Sixshot pushed him through the small base, back through the damage he had wrought on his way in, half-finished repairs, as if undoing, unknitting their bond.  Jetfire whimpered when Sixshot’s chassis wing bumped his, or at the too-intimate slide of the thighs against the backs of his. 

Sixshot must know, Jetfire thought, that rescue teams all left the ship, that their shuttle would be unarmed, empty.  He led Jetfire right to the verge. Jetfire struggled for something to say, but nothing he could think could make it any better.  No words could undo the damage.  And all this time he had been afraid of physical clumsiness, of hurting the Phase Sixer’s body. He had not thought he could do so much injury to something less visible.

Sixshot swung around, his heel plates ringing against the shuttle’s deck, Jetfire still outside. The arm over his throat loosened. He stepped away, turning importunate eyes to Sixshot.

Only to be met by the sole, harsh black eye of the gun.

Jetfire shuttered his optics briefly. Yes.  He was ready. He deserved this.  His optics opened, clear, deep pools of everything he wanted to say, but couldn’t.  

The gun barrel stared him down. He remembered the head exploding, the spray of silver splinters of metal flying, the cortex shattering, the soundless whine of death, the buzz-burst of the gun’s discharge.  He could handle it. The mech had died before the pain could hit.  He would get the same. He deserved no better.  Probably worse. 

Sixshot growled, the optics hot and coruscating with some unreadable emotion, over the gun, and suddenly the barrel was gone, and Skyfire was left blinking as the Phase Sixer stormed inside the shuttle, slapping the doorlocks.

Jetfire stood numb, still only half sure he wasn’t already dead, as the shuttle’s engines blasted to life, tearing the small craft free of the planet.  He heard the Autobots, his rescuers, assemble around him, some cursing, some blaming him, some pitying him what they thought was his ordeal.  He deserved it all. He wasn’t up for it, not when his spark gaped with pain at the worst thought of all—that Sixshot thought he had betrayed him.

Take me with you, he mouthed at the departing engine. The words he’d wanted finally coming to him, but late, too late.  Take me with you, away from this.  Away from…me. 

The rescue team broke around him like a wave, bustling with noise—after all of Sixshot’s silence, and questions he didn’t want to answer.  And life lurched forward again, the beautiful, frozen span that had been happiness and, and…not-loneliness and acceptance and the closest he had ever dared to love…melted and smeared in the hot light of reality.


End file.
